How to Ace the Google Interview: Ultimate Guide • Hacker News Board

Re: How to Ace the Google Interview: Ultimate Guide

#51

Post by dilyevsky » Wed, Apr 24, 2019, 12:54 AM UTC

matmann2001 wrote: post #21

This is getting ridiculous. These guides to interviewing at specific companies are starting to sound like the video game cheat code books of old. If the process is so nuanced that there's an entire industry around these types of guides (and Google even highly recommends you buy them!), then the process is fundamentally flawed. But we already knew that, and as long as others are still playing the game, we are forced t…

Google used to run “how to interview with Google” multiple day bootcamps where they’d train you to pass its interviews. I’ve gotten couple of those candidates and thought it was just ridiculous.

Re: How to Ace the Google Interview: Ultimate Guide

#52

Post by pdonis » Wed, Apr 24, 2019, 12:55 AM UTC

It would be nice if an article on how to ace a coding interview did not have incorrect code in it. AFAICT the set-based algorithm for finding duplicates is wrong; the resulting set will contain items in the list that are not duplicated.

Re: How to Ace the Google Interview: Ultimate Guide

#53

Post by peter_l_downs » Wed, Apr 24, 2019, 12:56 AM UTC

bitL wrote: post #44

ChrisCinelli wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely agree. Even Google suggest to "practice writing syntactically correct code on a whiteboard". This is clearly a useless skill as a software engineers except in getting a job at companies that do whiteboard interviews. Did you try to refactor code on a whiteboard? How are they able to find people that are able to efficiently debug problems? When I interview people I tell them, "Bring your own laptop set up…

Elite schools do that in undergrad; e.g. as an initial scored lab exercise, write this recursive fractal shape using Logo, parallel Delaunay triangulation with prefix sums , dynamic programming solving oligopoly problem or single-value Paxos pseudocode on a piece of paper in 10 minutes (I am being serious). If you can cope with it, it immediately shows up in the interview and you are considered a member of the club,…

Which elite schools? I went to MIT and didn’t have to do any of this.

Re: How to Ace the Google Interview: Ultimate Guide

#54

Post by qmanjamz » Wed, Apr 24, 2019, 1:03 AM UTC

awiesenhofer wrote: post #7

Genuine Question: Apart from maybe the money or a nice resume entry, why would you/do you want to?

There's no way this is actually a genuine question. It's the same reason anybody wants a job anywhere: because they'll eventually become homeless if they don't find a job.

Re: How to Ace the Google Interview: Ultimate Guide

#55

Post by chillacy » Wed, Apr 24, 2019, 1:06 AM UTC

6cd6beb wrote: post #34

simmanian wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't work at Google (and I don't agree with some of the things the company's decided to do) but have many friends who enjoy working there. From what I hear, Google has an organizational structure that is very favorable for regular engineers. Once you're hired and you put in around a year of work in a team, it's almost trivial to find another team. Engineers also directly evaluate managers and I've heard stories of…

>I've heard stories of mid to high level managers crying in bathrooms because of poor reviews from their reports. These factors combine to create an environment where teams are actively working to make engineers happy and content. Honestly this sounds like a thought experiment. Do you have any ethical hangups about entering an environment where falling out of your favor can leave someone stress-crying in their place…

At some other companies it’s the engineers crying in the bathroom, just sayin

Re: How to Ace the Google Interview: Ultimate Guide

#56

Post by 6cd6beb » Wed, Apr 24, 2019, 1:11 AM UTC

simmanian wrote: post #48

6cd6beb wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I've heard stories of mid to high level managers crying in bathrooms because of poor reviews from their reports. These factors combine to create an environment where teams are actively working to make engineers happy and content. Honestly this sounds like a thought experiment. Do you have any ethical hangups about entering an environment where falling out of your favor can leave someone stress-crying in their place…

Perhaps using the crying manager example was a bad idea on my part. What I can stand behind is having an org structure that encourages managers and execs to treat their employees well. It sounds like Google has done a better job than most. I'm sure there are managers and engineers crying in private in every big company out there. What I'm trying to say is even though a lot of people like to assume that people work fo…

There are at least two problems with this:

- "I'm sure there are managers and engineers crying in private in every big company out there": You're not excusing google here, just expanding the range of companies whose apparent behavior is mortifying a couple of people in this thread.

- "Google probably does some things very well to keep all the talent despite the negative press it gets.": probably. They probably do a lot of a/b testing to dial in the compensation/retention ratio they're looking for, or maybe they just heap rewards onto engineers because they can afford it. Be that as it may, some people think that what google's doing is detrimental to society, or at least the problems are bigger than a salary or even a total compensation package should make up for.

Re: How to Ace the Google Interview: Ultimate Guide

#57

Post by natalyarostova » Wed, Apr 24, 2019, 1:12 AM UTC

peter_l_downs wrote: post #53

bitL wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elite schools do that in undergrad; e.g. as an initial scored lab exercise, write this recursive fractal shape using Logo, parallel Delaunay triangulation with prefix sums , dynamic programming solving oligopoly problem or single-value Paxos pseudocode on a piece of paper in 10 minutes (I am being serious). If you can cope with it, it immediately shows up in the interview and you are considered a member of the club,…

Which elite schools? I went to MIT and didn’t have to do any of this.

It's a Caltech and Stanford thing. MIT isn't really elite.

Re: How to Ace the Google Interview: Ultimate Guide

#58

Post by yegle » Wed, Apr 24, 2019, 1:16 AM UTC

There's an unconscious bias in this post. Google as a company is not only interviewing engineering roles. Even for engineering roles, there are too many sub categories and many doesn't follow the typical SWE interview process.

If you just want to know what the interview for your roles would be, the recruiter from Google will happy to give you an overview.

Re: How to Ace the Google Interview: Ultimate Guide

#59

Post by sidlls » Wed, Apr 24, 2019, 1:19 AM UTC

awiesenhofer wrote: post #7

Genuine Question: Apart from maybe the money or a nice resume entry, why would you/do you want to?

The money is not quite life changing in the Bay Area but it's a significant acceleration towards retirement. I would not mind retiring in a few years, in my early 40s instead of working to 60+.

Re: How to Ace the Google Interview: Ultimate Guide

#60

Post by bitL » Wed, Apr 24, 2019, 1:19 AM UTC

You can bypass the whole charade by knowing 2-3 people within Google that can provide "assurance" you are good enough. Whiteboard testing is for grunts/unknowns without network. Another way is to be a significant contributor to some popular open source project.